PPOD 10/22/20: Chuck Schumer's Dems

The Senate Judiciary Committee moved the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett on to the next phase, to the full Senate, with a vote likely coming on Monday. I can't think of anything that will stop that from happening, barring some sudden urge to set her nomination aside and, I don't know, consider some legislation, or start another investigation, or something. 

The vote was unanimous, I guess. All twelve Republicans voted yes. All ten Democrats didn't bother showing up to vote.  

Oh, wait. Sorry Excuse me. All ten Democrats boycotted the vote. Sorry if I misrepresented what happened today. I'll let my very own Senator, Chuck Schumer, explain.

Democrats will not lend a single ounce of legitimacy to this sham vote in the judiciary... The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is the most illegitimate process I have ever witnessed in the Senate, and her potential confirmation will have dire, dire consequence for the Senate, for the Supreme Court, and our entire country for generations to come. The Senate Republican majority is conducting the most rushed, the most partisan, and the least legitimate nomination to the Supreme Court in our nation's history.

Blah blah blah, wah wah wah, sis boom bah.

As a former Dem, I'm (still) embarrassed by what passes for leadership in the party. Between House Speaker Nancy 'Let me clap you back and tear up your speech and fill my quiver with lots of arrows' Pelosi, and Chuck 'I never met a camera I didn't like' Schumer (there are others, too), it's hard to look at the leadership of the party with any respect. (Pelosi herself has been a PPOD recipient in the past.)

Rather than skipping out on the meeting, the adult thing to do would have been to show up,  explain one more time for the record why it was the wrong thing for the Judiciary Committee to do, respond to whatever statements the Rs made (instead just reading their remarkably similar prepared remarks), and then voting against moving the nomination forward. 

Instead, they put pictures of people who benefited from the Affordable Care Act in their chairs, and hoped that their colleagues on the other side of the aisle would look at those, feel bad, and delay the vote. Not only that, but it seems they also thought that not showing up would mean the vote wouldn't happen. Schumer said "the rules require a quorum" and for the Judiciary Committee, that means at least 9 Rs and two Ds would have to be present to hold a vote. The thought that the rules would apply here, or on any other issue related to Mitch McConnell's relentless march towards as close to a 100% conservative federal judiciary as is humanly possible, is absurd.  (McConnell, too, is a previous PPOD recipient).

I hate to point out that this silliness, during an election where perhaps the highest priority is gaining the majority in the Senate, is not likely to be the kind of thing that's going to push an undecided voter to choose blue. Worse, it might be just the thing to embolden the red guys in the several very close Senate races that the Dems need to win to get the majority. Why feed the beast?

And, with a 17% approval rating for Congress as a whole - the lowest it's been in a year - why don't you at least show up?

For their childishness, for their ill-advised PR stunt, for failing to show up and do their jobs, for thinking the rules would apply, and for pulling this crap now, with so much hanging in the balance, Chuck Schumer and the Judiciary Committee Dems are my Pet Peeve of the Day.